EU vs. Google: Is An IP Address Personal?

Paris (dbTechno) - Google and the European Union have a bit of tension between them as the European Union has to decide whether or not the IP (Internet Protocol) address of a person should be personal information or public information.

The Head of the European Union’s Group of Data Privacy Regulators has come out and stated that IP addresses which show and identify computers on the internet should be considered personal information.

Google argues that an IP address simply identifies the location fo a computer and not the actual user. They state that it is more of public information than anything else.

This is a big issue as the European Union has to decide whether or not they will see an IP address as personal information or public. If they see it as private information it could have a huge effect on how search engines from major companies keep and track data from users.

Peter Scharr heads up the European Union’s Group of Data Privacy Regulators and are working on a report which will detail privacy policies of Internet search engines. These will consist of Google, Microsoft, Yahoo! and others. The goal of the report is to see how well these companies follow privacy laws by the European Union.

Peter Fleischer, Global Privacy Counsel for Google, stated that Google needs the IP address information in order to more accurately give customers what they want. It allows them to give back proper search results, languages, etc.

Either way the decision is forthcoming over the IP address issue.